Free Republic

Bachmann focused her 15-minute speech on legislation authored by Paul in the House to audit the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve Transparency Act lists Bachmann as a co-sponsor, and the Congresswoman's call that the Federal Reserve, "Should be about protecting the soundness of our dollar, not inflating it, and not destroying it," drew chants of "End the Fed," in the crowd. In her introduction of Representative Paul, Bachmann lauded the former GOP presidential candidate, who is now joined by Bachmann in his "Thursday Liberty Luncheon" in D.C. - a luncheon in which issues of monetary policy and getting more liberty...

Sarah Palin, in what was billed as her first speech overseas, spoke on Wednesday to Asian bankers, investors and fund managers. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Jeff Topping/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Jonathon Stone, the chairman and CEO of CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, with Sarah Palin at a meeting in Hong Kong on Wednesday. Blog The Caucus The latest on President Obama, the new administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion. More Politics News A number of people who heard the speech in a packed hotel ballroom, which was

Having strong libertarian tendencies, I pay special attention to issues which present a reasonably good choice between libertarianism and statism – - libertarianism being, in essence, a philosophy that favors individual liberty, less government, and low taxes, and statism being the belief in better living through bigger government. While it seems to me that at least a strong plurality and probably a majority of Americans still hold to libertarian principles, our lives are controlled by the incessant, internecine “liberal-versus-conservative,” “Democrat-versus-Republican” political battles in which libertarian values are either ignored or honored only for show. How can it be, I lament,...

Choice, competition, reducing costs -- those are the things that I want to see accomplished in this health reform bill," President Barack Obama told talk-show host Michael Smerconish last week.

Jon Rowe delivers the kind of thoughtful argumentation we’ve come to expect from him. In a gay marriage dispute between Andrew Sullivan and Robert P. George, Rowe parts ways with both of them and advocates the political philosophy that has nourished so much of his commentary: However, libertarianism offers probably what is closest to true neutrality in a pluralistic world where we disagree over concepts of “the good.” All laws impose morality. And libertarianism stands for the least amount of government, and consequently the least amount of government-imposed morality. Moreover, the legally imposed moral rules that libertarians endorse — that...

One of the greatest strengths of libertarianism is its ideological consistency. It is also libertarianism’s greatest weakness. When I went back to college in my 30s to complete my BA and MA in history, I found that a lot of aspects of libertarian thought, as intellectually satisfying as they were, simply didn’t fit the facts of history all that well. The early American republic, for example, wasn’t the paragon of laissez-faire capitalism that many libertarians imagine. State and local governments were extremely active in regulating commerce of many sorts, from alcohol sales restrictions, to granting of monopolies, to generous subsidies...

"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" (Tanstaafl, get it?) originated way back in the late 1800s, when saloons offered free lunches to the homeless. All they had to do was buy one drink. How could they do this? Well, the drinks were higher priced than other saloons, perhaps, or maybe rooms were more expensive. One way or the other, the cost of those free meals would have to be recouped. If they weren't they would have to eventually go out of business. Wikipedia actually has a great article on the history of the phrase, but TANSTAAFL is...

With the fate of 70 million desperate, miserable, and mostly-enslaved Iranians hanging in the balance, now is the time for Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, and others to declare that freedom is an absolute, undeniable, and irrevocable birthright of man. They need to come out unambiguously on the side of the Iranian people and against the Iranian dictators. These Free World leaders -- if they are leaders, and if they do champion freedom -- should loudly and pointedly make the case that all individuals, everywhere on earth, have an utter and untouchable right to liberty and justice....

Retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski in once again on the air after a year's absence----and has restarted her Internet radio program "American Forum." Kwiatkowski is a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties in the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. Lt Col Kwiatkowski's " American Forum" radio program includes discussions about libertarianism and the state of the economy. Lt Col Kwiatkowski's PhD in World Politics was taken at Catholic University of America. Her doctoral thesis centered on overt and covert war in Angola. She has also published two books about US policy towards...

I recently attended a dinner with a group of prominent liberal and libertarian bloggers to see if there is a community of interest that might lead to closer cooperation on some issues. On the surface, there would appear to be potential for an alliance. Libertarians tend to be liberal on social issues, favoring such things as gay marriage and drug legalization; and also liberal on defense and foreign policy, opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and opposing torture and restrictions on civil liberties in the name of national security. But libertarians are conservative on economic policy--favoring a free market...

America, Britain, and France should have unilaterally attacked the Soviet Union in 1949 when the Soviets first aquired nuclear weapons. Or else the pre-emptive strike even should have come several years before, when the world could clearly see it coming. The Soviet Union was an unpredictable, radical, military dictatorship, based on a stunningly false and evil ideology, with strongly imperialist, expansionist, aggressive proclivities. They constituted a masive, objective threat which needed to be neutralized, lest the West live in perpetual fear, due to its inablility to properly protect itself from this unprecedented menace. Self-defense -- it should be understood --...

Mega-props to our President Obama for yesterday's speechifying about simplifying and fair-izing the Infernal Revenue Service and all that. Except for one small nitpicky thing: He's full of shit on this topic. How precisely is he or his Slugger's Row of policy mavens (you know, the idjits who can't even use Turbo Tax) gonna make the income tax more fair? As it stands, the top 1 percent of filers pay 40 percent of all income taxes; the top 5 percent pay 60 percent; and the top 10 percent pay fully 70 percent of all income taxes. The bottom 50 percent...

At a deeper level, the modern conservative movement, which eventually came to define the GOP (to its benefit for many years), was built on an ideological foundation--and a coalition--that took a charismatic leader to bring it together (Ronald Reagan), a tacit agreement among its coalition partners to give each other what they wanted, and a message machine to start selling the idea that that there was coherence to a conservative "philosophy." Modern conservatism wove together five discrete strands and interest groups that couldn't coexist. What is remarkable is how well it held together despite the fact that those strands were...

Earlier today President Obama spoke to the Turkish parliment and claimed that America and Muslims have "common hopes and common dreams." Now this is a considerable lie. He said we should interact "based on mutual interest and mutual respect." This is also untrue. Obama further opined that Americans have, or should have, a "deep appreciation for the Islamic faith." Wrong again! Finally, and outrageously, the president claimed that "The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans." Don't know what to say to that post-9/11 whopper! At one point in the speech Barack Obama cited an old Turkish proverb which...

"Divide et impera" (divide and rule) is an ancient maxim that became the basis of Machiavelli's approach to power and political theory.  It is the same modus operandi used by the left in this country over the past 16 years that has given us the most radical government in our history. In today's world of sound bites and miniscule attention spans a simple sentence: "There isn't a bit of difference between Republicans and Democrats."  has become imbedded in the nation's lexicon and the foundation of the strategy to split what is a majority right of center country into many factions. ...

Today's G-20 economic summit conference in London is virtually guarenteed to be a ghastly pro-Big Government orgy -- a veritable Lolapalooza for Leviathan. Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan -- not to mention John Locke and Adam Smith -- are going to be spinning in their graves. Nothing is more certain than that this tour de force of politico-economic stupidity and depravity is going to come out four-square against true free enterprize, capitalism, and laissez-faire. Sadly and almost incomprehensibly, the great conclusion of today's deepest thinkers (sic) is that the "Anglo-Saxon" version of political and economic liberty has proven to be...

What It Feels Like To Be A Libertarian (posted January 2009) Political analysts frequently consider what it means to be a libertarian. In fact, in 1997, Charles Murray published a short book entitled "What It Means to Be a Libertarian" that does an excellent job of presenting the core principles of libertarian political philosophy. But almost no one ever discusses what it feels like to be a libertarian. How does it actually feel to be someone who holds the principles described in Murray’s book? I’ll tell you. It feels bad. Being a libertarian means living with an almost unendurable level...

I don’t know whether this belongs in the comic-relief category or the future-threats category, but the Harvard Law School is having a conference to analyze the “free market mindset.” The basic premise of the conference seems to be that people who believe in limited government are psychologically troubled. The conference schedule features presentations such as “How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community” and “Addicted to Incentives: How the Ideology of Self Interest Can Be Self-Fulfilling.” The most absurd presentation, though, may be the one entitled, “Colossal Failure: The Output Bias of Market Economies.” According to the description, the author argues...

Hey all you religious zealots who thought President Bush's Office Of Faith Based Initiatives was a good idea: President Obama's social kommissars have hijacked the joint. Oh, the name won't change; they need the religious cover. Plaster a cross on the community organizin' and it's all good! The Obama approach will keep the basic structure that the Bush administration took. There will be a White House-based office and Centers for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in the executive agencies. White House officials and outside advisors say that Obama's effort will be broader than his predecessor's and he will expand the scope...

LISTEN LIVE:SOUND OFF CONNECTICUT WITH JIM VICEVICH: 9AM TILL RUSH Sound off Connecticut with Jim Vicevich 9am - Noon Jim Vicevich hosts "Sound off Connecticut" every weekday morning and although he tends to lean to the right "Sound off Connecticut" welcomes and encourages viewpoints from every side. So call in and voice your opinion. This is your chance to "sound off." HTTP://WWW.WTICAM.COM TO LISTEN LIVE Jim also has a LIVE blog during the show click here: http://www.radioviceonline.com/ to see the news videos and sound bites he uses for show prep and archive click HERE for the live blog with streaming...

Sound off Connecticut with Jim Vicevich 10am until Rush Jim Vicevich hosts "Sound off Connecticut" every weekday morning and although he tends to lean to the right "Sound off Connecticut" welcomes and encourages viewpoints from every side. So call in and voice your opinion. This is your chance to "sound off." http://www.wtic.com/pages/13975.php Jim Vicevich Jim Vicevich hosts "Sound off Connecticut" every weekday morning. Republitarian by nature (see Larry Elder, KABC), Jim has more than 20 years experience in broadcast television. With 6 Emmy nominations and 3 Telly Awards, Jim has worked most recently as business and financial reporter for NBC30...

The main organic and structural solution to the current mortgage and credit crisis -- and subsequent Wall Street panic and government bailout -- is to immediately terminate all those "government sponsored enterprises." This certainly seems to be the root of the problem. These state-backed banks have an unfair advantage over legitimate banks, and thus tend to destroy them -- while conducting business badly. Such GSEs, with their unnaturally low interest rates, significantly distort the mortgage and credit markets, and ultimately hurt pretty much everything they touch. They fundamentally attack economic freedom and capitalism, and have no right to exist. The...

Imagine the frustration of the first Yankees, struggling mightily to convince their Puritanical brethren that private property — not communal wealth-sharing — brings prosperity, freedom and enlightenment. Were they mocked, burned as witches or simply ignored? How did they eventually sway the masses to their view? Not just temporarily, in a fine-whatever kind of agreement, but as the kind of deep change that, within just a handful of generations, saw the Puritans evolve into the rugged Yankees that would pen the world's first written constitution, establish individual freedoms, protect private property and free speech and eventually revolt against the British?...

Proposition 8 was an unsung victory for defenders of individual liberty. Wait, I know what many people will say to this. How can a measure that prevents gay couples from getting a marriage license be beneficial to the defense of individual liberty? It's because that vote represented a line drawn in the sand, even if a thin one, preventing the government from furthering its control over the institution. As it currently stands, there is nothing short of the problem of finding a pastor, priest or rabbi who is willing to perform the marriage rite that is stopping most gay couples...

We've seen a lot of social conservatives upset over today's intemperate attack by Kathleen Parker (Note: she was unnecessarily contemptuous, but her point that "the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs" is worth serious consideration).Well, I am a libertarian, so let's talk about the Kathleen Parker of the social conservative crowd: Mike Huckabee.This week, Huckabee called libertarians the "real threat" to the Republican Party... In a chapter titled "Faux-Cons: Worse than Liberalism," Huckabee identifies what he calls the "real threat" to...

Billionaire Facebook investor's anti-immigrant heresy By Owen Thomas, 11:20 AM on Fri Nov 14 2008, 4,806 views Insiders at Clarium Capital, the $5.3 billion hedge fund run by Facebook investor Peter Thiel, are buzzing about their boss's $1 million donation to NumbersUSA, an anti-immigrant group. The donation is an open secret within Clarium, and it has enraged several staff members who joined Clarium because they believed Thiel shared their libertarian ideals. When I asked Thiel if he'd made the donation, an underling passed on a nondenial saying the company didn't comment on "gossip and heresy." A typo — he meant...

Ian presented the court officials with a response. He was not against removing the couch - a responsible neighbor takes note of the complaints of his neighbor. He just wanted to talk with the woman who filed the complaint, to find out what offended her about how his property was, and he'd then remove it if it still bothered her. A very adult-like thing to do. The court refused, and instead initiated a trial. Today, Ian appeared at their trial and intended only on calling the damaged person making a complaint against him. He never got that far, it seems....

BY now you've probably heard: The GOP is becoming too regional, too white, too old to compete nationally. Democrats look like the cast of "Rent," while Republicans look like diehard fans of "Matlock" and "Murder, She Wrote." Fine. The GOP needs to win over more Hispanics, young people, suburban women. That sounds plausible. But what does "win over" mean? To listen to many pundits, it means Republicans must become Democrats. The GOP has become too socially conservative, and if it wants to win the support of mainstream voters, it will need to become more socially liberal. If only the party...

By now you’ve probably heard: The GOP is becoming too regional, too white, too old to compete at a national level. Democrats look like a merging of the cast of Rent and Up With People, while Republicans look like diehard fans of Matlock and Murder, She Wrote. Fine, fine. The GOP needs to win over more Hispanics, young people, suburban women. That sounds perfectly plausible. But what does “win over” mean? To listen to many pundits and analysts, it means Republicans must become Democrats. The GOP has become too socially conservative, and if it wants to win the support of...

Gov. Mark Sanford made probably the most correct assesment on the 2008 election. From CNN: Beyond the presidential race, it goes without saying the Republican Party took a shellacking nationally. Some on the left will say our electoral losses are a repudiation of our principles of lower taxes, smaller government and individual liberty. But Tuesday was not in fact a rejection of those principles — it was a rejection of Republicans’ failure to live up to those principles. That concise paragraph sums everything up perfectly. But perhaps the problem isn’t articulating conservative principles, it’s running candidates who actually believe in...

It's no secret that the Bush years have severely strained and perhaps broken the conservative-libertarian political coalition. Most libertarians were deeply disappointed by the Bush Administration's vast expansion of government spending and regulation, claims of virtually unlimited wartime executive power, and other departures from limited government principles. As a result, many libertarian intellectuals (and to a lesser extent, libertarian voters), actually supported Barack Obama this year, despite his being a very statist liberal. Republican nominee John McCain had opposed some of Bush's excesses, including rejecting Bush's stance on torture and being one of the very few GOP senators to vote...

A source of mild entertainment amid the financial carnage has been watching libertarians scurrying to explain how the global financial crisis is the result of too much government intervention rather than too little. One line of argument casts as villain the Community Reinvestment Act, which prevents banks from "redlining" minority neighborhoods as not creditworthy. Another theory blames Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for causing the trouble by subsidizing and securitizing mortgages with an implicit government guarantee. An alternative thesis is that past bailouts encouraged investors to behave recklessly in anticipation of a taxpayer rescue.

I have long wondered why Liberalism in America came to be associated with quasi-socialist policies and big government. In Europe, liberals are "social democrats" from what I understand, while the term "liberal" is applied to free market and what we would call libertarian types. Liberalism is the foundation of this country and originally expressed pro-limited government views not held by liberals today, but in fact held by conservatives today. The classiscal Liberalism of old is much closer politically to Libertarianism or Conservatism today than to what we have come to know as Liberalism. I have seen many anti-liberal sentiments here...

No extreme hazards found in basement workshop that alarmed authorities MARLBORO— Victor Deeb, the retired chemist who stored hundreds of chemicals in his house, was allowed to return home yesterday after authorities spent three days dismantling his basement laboratory. None of the materials found at 81 Fremont St. posed a radiological or biological risk, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. No mercury or poison was found. Some of the compounds are potentially explosive, but no more dangerous than typical household cleaning products.

"Texas authorities on Tuesday indicted the leader of a polygamous sect ... on charges of felony sexual assault on a minor, the first criminal charges to stem from a massive raid on the group's West Texas compound," The Los Angeles Times reported last week (http://tinyurl.com/6oenlz). The Associated Press and other media used similar words: "indicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs ... charges of felony sexual assault of a child." Straightforward reporting? In my "20/20" special "Sex in America", polygamy activist Mark Henkel said no, it's an ignorant distortion. "The media kept saying, 'Polygamist leader, polygamist leader,'" Henkel told me. "But...

In a desolate public park in Columbus, Ohio, a man responded to the advances of a topless woman. She asked him to "show me yours." When he did, police officers arrested him. Columbus law says her being topless is OK; exposing his genitalia is not. Why did cops hide in the shadows to arrest a man no one but they could see? On last week's "20/20", Dr. Marty Klein pointed out that the police weren't protecting children. "There were no children anywhere in sight. In fact, there were no adults anywhere in sight." Klein says it's part of "America's War...

began teaching an undergraduate economics course this week. ... Blast from the Past I always appreciate the input from such students for three reasons. First, it's healthy for discussion. The essence of public policy is deciding what government should and should not do. The libertarian point of view, which basically argues for minimal government authority, helps to anchor that debate. Government has certainly caused plenty of problems, and the "law of unintended consequences" -- the notion that implementing a policy to fix one problem often creates another -- is one of the most important concepts for any policymaker to understand....

"You will always have the poor among you..." In those words Jesus stated a simple fact that has held true through the centuries. In every society, no matter how rich and bountiful, there have always been impoverished people. These people evoke our concern and sympathy. We want to help them, but how? No society has ever overcome poverty. In the US today, the question of how to help the poor is particularly controversial, with two partisan sides struggling vigorously to promote their own answers. The liberal camp argues that government is the best entity to help the poor at home...

As we consider the current condition of libertarianism, here in the middle of the 21st century, we might pause to reflect upon the bleak fate that befell the last flowering of personal freedom. That period of liberalism and liberation blossomed in the late 20th century, before coming to a disastrous end in the first decade of this new millennium. We can call that happy period the Rand Era, in honor of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged, a book still intensely and tragically relevant 101 years after its publication. But let's look back before we look to the present—and to...

Could Bob Barr become this year's Ralph Nader, helping to "spoil" the White House ambitions of John McCain. The former Georgia Republican congressman announced he was seeking the Libertarian nomination for president this week, and immediately disputed that he is spoiling things for anyone. "The American voters deserve better than simply the lesser of two evils," he said as he outlined his platform to freeze discretionary spending and withdraw from Iraq. [Snip] Still, Republicans claim they aren't concerned by Mr. Barr's possible appearance on all those state ballots. But they should be. You can bet cable TV producers who are...

PINAL COUNTY, Ariz. — The government of this fiefdom south of Phoenix claims that when it approved Dale Bell's blueprint for his Western-theme restaurant with an outdoor stage in an enclosed courtyard, it assumed the stage would be used for mimes or poetry readings. Mimes in Arizona scrubland? Poetry at the San Tan Flat Steakhouse and Saloon? The authorities were, they insist, shocked when country music broke out, and they are scandalized because some customers, not content to tap their feet to the Western beat while they eat, get up and dance.

It is fascinating watching politicians say how they are going to rescue the "rust belt" regions where jobs are disappearing and companies are either shutting down or moving elsewhere. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is being blamed for the jobs going elsewhere. Barack Obama blames the Clinton administration for NAFTA, and that includes Hillary Clinton. Senator Obama says that he is for free trade, provided it is "fair trade." That is election year rhetoric at its cleverest. Since "fair" is one of those words that can mean virtually anything to anybody, what this amounts to is that politicians...

Once upon a time, free-market advocacy was the distinguishing feature of conservatives. As the movement's early development spanned from the New Deal to the Great Society, conservatives were consistent in leading the intellectual defense of market competition, privatization, and deregulation. Many of the greatest achievements of the conservative movement can be partially or wholly credited to Milton Friedman, the brilliant Nobel-prize winning economist. Now, whatever market-friendliness is left among many mainstream conservatives is either a) predominantly overshadowed by social concerns, such as the imagined "threat to marriage" or "indecency"; b) replaced by trade protectionism, found most commonly in Midwestern and...

For me, drug use is immoral. The harder the drug, the more immoral. Why? I believe there is an inherent value in having control of our faculties at all times. So why, might you ask, do I believe that drugs should be legalized? The answer is simple – making drugs illegal only masks the problem and may, in fact, make the problem even worse. If a friend came to me and said, “Hey, I’m thinking about shooting up. What are your thoughts?” I would tell him that I value self-control and that drug use and the value of self-control are...

Residents of a tony, high-rise condominium along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis are among the first to vote to make their building smoke-free, taking Minnesota's battle over smoking bans into private homes. The rule, at La Rive Condominiums near St. Anthony Main, covers individual units, common areas, garages and private balconies. Current owners who want to smoke will be grandfathered in, but future buyers will have to abide by the rule. Opponents say the ban is an intrusion into private property rights that could hurt resale prospects at a time when the market is already soft. Supporters counter that, not...

Last week, The Weekly Standard ran an article by academics Benjamin and Jena Silber Storey praising the rise of Sen. John McCain in the Republican presidential primaries. The Weekly Standard has long been a McCain supporter, going back to the 2000 election. The magazine adores McCain's rugged, Theodore Roosevelt philosophy of governance, one that emphasizes American might, exalts public service, and believes that so long as the right people are governing, government can be a transformative, transcendent, almost mystical force for good in the world.The Weekly Standard began in the mid-1990s, on the heels of the dramatic GOP takeover of...

It has become a common view among pundits observing the Democratic primary campaign that there isn't a great deal of substantive disagreement between the frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and so the contest between them comes down to a contest of style - more specifically, Obama's style and Clinton's lack thereof - or perhaps, if Andrew Sullivan is right, a tectonic generational conflict. To the extent that both the media and the leading campaigns are propelling the idea that the underlying dynamic in the race is "change versus experience", it's true, and self-fulfillingly if not trivially so, that substantive...

I just got a phone call from a relative in West Virginia, a long time, hardcore libertarian who relayed to me the wildest story. He's totally a straight shooting guy and its not like he lays crazy rumors on me all the time, so whatever he said he heard he heard. And apparently there's a rumor going around that Huckabee is set to drop out of the presidential race and give a go towards the nomination with the Libertarian Party. Along with him, his staff, and his money would apparently come his constituency. And it would be all because of...

A reader writes in: "In response to a recent editorial, entitled 'Higher gasoline taxes?' that stated that because 'family paychecks barely cover basics, the money [needed to repair our country's crumbing infrastructure should come from] somewhere else.' What could this 'somewhere else' be? ... Is the Review-Journal advocating higher Federal income taxes, or a new national sales tax, or new toll road like user fees to pay for this? Also, how would higher withholding or sales taxes or higher user fees put more money in the pocket of the U.S. consumer? However defined, 'somewhere else' is just cost shifting." Aside...

For the past few months most libertarians have been pleased to see Ron Paul achieving unexpected success with his presidential campaign’s message of ending the Iraq war, abolishing the federal income tax, establishing sound money, and restoring the Constitution. Sure, some of us didn’t like his talk about closing the borders and his conspiratorial view of a North-South highway. But the main themes of his campaign, the ones that generated the multi-million-dollar online fundraising spectaculars and the youthful “Ron Paul Revolution,” were classic libertarian issues. It was particularly gratifying to see a presidential candidate tie the antiwar position to a...